Paxman in Patagonia

Source: The Sunday Times {Travel}Edition:Country: UKDate: Sunday 1, March 2015Page: 18,19Area: 1691 sq. cmCirculation: ABC 801623 WeeklyAd data: page rate £60,690.00, scc rate £144.00Phone: 020 7782 5000Keyword: www.cazloyd.com

Paxman inPatagonia

Jeremy Paxman feeds hisfly-fishing obsession with anodyssey to the trout-rich watersof southern Chile. True to form,he lets very few off the hook

One sunny May afternoon inWiltshire, I met an old man on the riverbank. I was catching nothing. He askedwhat fly I’d been using, and when Ishowed him, he snorted and offered meone from his own box, saying he’d beentaking trout all day. He said, in a ratherfalsely modest voice, that one of themhad been a wild fish of more than 4lb —big for a southern English chalk stream.A few hours later, I bumped into him

again. Now he was with a friend, the twoof them chatting as they sauntered upthe evening river bank, keen to get homebefore it was too dark. “Thanks for thatfly,” I said. “I’ve been catching fish allafternoon, though I didn’t get anythingas big as your four-pounder.”His friend answered before he couldl “H ld i HOW bi ? Th

reply. “He told you it was HOW big? Thatfish was half that size — 2lb if it was anounce.” And off down the river bankthey wandered, friends squabbling andlaughing as they had for decades. That’sone of the things I adore about fishing.It makes you a child again.I do not propose to spend many words

explaining to those who have no ears tolisten why I find the infantilising powerof fishing so seductive. If you don’t get it,you don’t get it. Read no further.Most of us learnt to fish as children,

and so going fishing is a reversion to astate of uncomplicatedness, before plans,before careers, before bills. Maybe lotsof other pursuits have similar powers.

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The rivers cascade out ofsnow-tipped mountains and theair is so clean, you can almostfeel it descaling your lungsI know nothing of bungee-jumping orembroidery. But I do know a little bitabout the ability of fly-fishing to dissolvethe cares of the world.The worst times of the year for a

fisherman are the dank days of lateJanuary and early February. By March weare already tying up flies that representthe triumph of hope over experience, andwhile I have never caught a trout on aMarch brown in March — a fabledachievement — it is a month of dreams.But what to do about those first few

weeks of the year? The close season, thespawning season, when no one goesfishing, is a period of miserableabstinence. It is time to think of goingelsewhere.Fishermen have always travelled. In

the early days of the 20th century, therivers of Norway and Iceland wereinfested with dukes, earls, successfulbankers and industrialists. By the end ofthe century, travel agents were organisingvisits for any Tom, Dick or Harry.Destinations proliferated. With the

collapse of communism, former Soviethelicopters were used to ferry men andwomen in waders across the tundra ofthe Kola Peninsula or into OuterMongolia. The 1,000 or so inhabitantsof Christmas Island, in the Pacific, whohad already done nothing to deservebeing chosen as a nuclear-bomb test sitein the 1950s, now found themselvesinvaded by an army of men and womenin bad hats, trying to fly-fish in the sea.

To try to catch trout — the noblest offreshwater fish — in winter, you must gosouth. The imperial British took theirobsessions with them when theygrabbed their colonies, and today youcan find the descendants of Loch Leventrout just about everywhere from NewZealand to Kashmir.Chile was never a formal part of the

empire, but, for my money, it has thebest trout fishing on earth, with riverscascading out of snow-tipped mountainsd i l h l f l

and air so clean that you can almost feelit descaling your lungs. Surely the RioCisnes — a clear, wild dream of a river —is the place to be reintroduced to your12-year-old self.Doubtless, there were fish in the

rivers of Patagonia before settlers plantedtrout in them a hundred-odd years ago.But if so, they were long ago eaten ordriven out. And if getting away from itall is what you’re after, Patagonia is theplace to be.Is there something absurd about

spending 17 hours flying to Santiago,Chile’s capital, hanging about in theairport, taking another flight to reach thelittle regional capital of Coyhaique andthen embarking on a three-hour roadtrip north — to a remote lodge, with justthree bedrooms, not so far from theArgentine border? Yes, of course there is.But at the end of the journey, at least weknew we were properly away, in summerin the middle of northern winter.

Where to wade in:my favourite spotsfor fishing in BritainMost of my trout-fishing nowadays ison Wiltshire and Hampshire chalkstreams. In the West Country, youcan fish miles of wild rivers for £10 orso a day (westcountryangling.com)and similar “passports” to unexploredbits of the Usk, in the Welsh Borders,can be obtained from the Wye & UskFoundation (wyeuskfoundation.org).In Herefordshire, I have happymemories of the River Teme.

In the north of England, myfavourite rivers are the Wharfe andthe Ure, in Yorkshire, where I firstlearnt to fish. Both have angling clubsand day tickets. Every fly-fishermandreams of fishing a big salmon riversuch as the Tweed or the Spey, inScotland, and occasionally you canget a guest ticket on local associationwater without taking out a secondmortgage: it’s always worth inquiring.Elsewhere in Scotland, there arehundreds of rivers and lochs you canfish at minimal charge — you justneed to ask. That’s the moral: just ask.




For an internet connection, you hadto travel nine miles of dirt road, andthen sit on the ground outside themunicipal offices to hop onto the wi-fiin a town that appeared to be underoccupation by an army of sleeping dogswith a very unusual number of legsbetween them. It was preposterous.And it was heaven.Though it will test the credulity of

sensible people further to say so, it isimportant that it is not too easy tocatch a fish. The rivers of Patagoniateem with wild trout and even the nameof our lodge, La Posada de los Farios,translates as “the inn of the browntrout”. But that does not mean thefish are necessarily stupid, and theprinciples of fishing remain the same,wherever you are.Part of the explanation for the

pastime’s powerful grip may simply bethe companionship of pals — Iwastravelling with two of them. But I thinkthere is something else, too.Fish cannot survive in our world for

long, nor we in theirs. Fishing is wherethe universes meet. Flicking a fly ontothe surface of the water and watchingwith bated breath as a trout swims lazilyup to inspect it, then turns away,dissatisfied, is to be reminded of thelimits of our capabilities: fully grownhuman beings humbled by a creaturewith a brain the size of a pea. Theactivity’s obsessional quality is what

makes it instantly and unerringly comic.For three adult males accustomed tobeing listened to, to travel thousandsof miles to be ignored by stupid troutis just funny.Fishing is about guile and

deception. And its promise isto take you to a place wherehumankind doesn’t belong.It might be the depths of a lake.Or it might, like Patagonia, bea crazy landscape of snowymountaintops, plunging valleys thickwith ancient trees, prickly calafatebushes and fuchsias, at the bottom ofwhich are racing, glacier-melt riverson whose banks lupins have seeded

themselves everywhere.The only human you are likely to seeall day might be a solitary black-hatted

h b ld h h

gaucho on a piebald horse, with someindefinable breed of dog trotting at hishorse’s heels. We even saw the occasionalcondor wheeling in the sky.Ferdinand Magellan gave Patagonia

its name because he thought the place tobe inhabited by indigenous tribes with

enormous feet, the Patagones. But,actually, humanity has trod verylightly on the landscape. Ibiseshonked their mild irritation at beingdisturbed on the river bank, butbronze-breasted kingfisherssitting on riverside branchesseemed to have almost no fear ofhumans at all.Mind you, the flies that we

were asked to use by the twofishing guides seemed to have

little relation to any insect we hadever seen — great rubber-leggedsupposed imitations ofgrasshoppers, with names likeFat Albert and what I

took to be Purple Penis (I hadmisheard: it was Purple Peanut).Sometimes we fished in the

conventional English dry-flymanner, to rising fish. More often,we threw these fly patterns — thesize of small birds — into what lookedlikely spots.And soon we were back in the world of

the child. Who had caught the most?

Who had caught the biggest fish? Thebickering continued all day. Did I catch18 or 20 trout that first day? Who cares?But care you must, or else what doesany of it matter? After a while we alllost count, but over the course of ninedays, we certainly caught four orfive hundred trout.My biggest shock in Patagonia came

when we stopped on a dirt road to pickup a bent old gaucho, standing with histhumb out. He looked to have walked outof a sepia photo, in pinstriped breechesand broad-brimmed straw hat. He hada strong farmyard smell, and attemptedto put on his seat belt by attaching itto his trousers, as if it were a pair ofback-to-front braces.When I asked him “Cuantos años

tienes?”, I discovered that he was thesame age as me. It didn’t seem possible.




THE BRIEFJeremy Paxman was a guest ofCazenove+Loyd, which can organisea nine-night fishing trip to ChileanPatagonia from £4,460pp, includingall international and domestic travel,two nights, full-board, at the SingularSantiago and seven nights at La Posadade los Farios (chilepatagonia. com) —where all food and drink, as well as afishing guide, are included (020 73842332, cazloyd.com).

A condorswoops; above,a giant fly,ready for use




In the swim A Patagonianbrown tro Above LaPosada de los Farios




Leon Werdiner; David Kleyn/Alamy; Marco Simoni; Remco Douma/Getty; Rex Bryngelson

Wild frontierr A gauchogon the plains. Below,p

Jeremy shows off yetyanother catch

FalklandIslands

Coyhaique

La Posadade los Farios

SantiagoBuenos

Aires

200miles

CHILE

ARGENTINA




C t f th dPatagonia’s rivers

teem wit trout



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Paxman in Patagonia